Ghostcrawler confirmed that it's a deliberate move to have secondary-stat gems like Deadly Vermilion Onyx have beefed up stats in comparison to primary-stat gems like Delicate Primordial Ruby. In Cata, players stacked primary stat gems and they want socketing to be more interesting in Mists.

Cutting Edge: Will of the Emperor and similar Feats of Strength can only be obtained in their current tier, so players can't go back later with better gear to get it.

Scribes have many more other perks, from crafting new vanity glyphs to controlling the shoulder enchant market. You can read all about it in our previous Inscription Guide.

Hit the break for all the blue posts in the news round up!

Heroic Elite Items

Watcher

These items are obtained by defeating last on the Protectors of the Endless encounter.

Staggered Raid Releases

Crithto

We’ve been keeping a very close eye on the feedback players have shared for both Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria raiding. We saw a lot of evidence and heard a lot of feedback which indicated that raid content was a little overwhelming at the beginning of Cataclysm. Our goal is to smooth that out a bit in Mists of Pandaria. Keep in mind, Mogu'shan Vaults opens up one week after Mists of Pandaria launches. And with its Heroic mode even the most seasoned raiders should be pretty busy. Once the raid dungeon has been cleared by a group on normal mode they’ll unlock Heroic mode, a definite ramp up in challenge. Also note, similar to Dragon Soul, Raid Finder mode for Mogu'shan Vaults will be available about one week after the normal raid has been opened.

Rather than putting a lot of pressure on players by opening up sixteen raid bosses in three separate difficulties upon release of the expansion, we hope you’ll have a chance to really dig into the lore, the gorgeous new continent, the amazing new quests, and all of the other goodies that are far too numerable to mention. Our intention here is not to artificially extend the life of the 5.0 content, but rather to pace it better than we have in previous releases. This is why we noted that a few weeks after zone=6125] opens, raid instances Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring will become available. These dungeons will still very much be hot on the heels of Mogu'shan Vaults, particularly for the large majority of players progressing through Pandaria.

Here’s a basic breakdown of the pattern we’d like to follow for all upcoming raids: Dungeon opens on normal difficulty --> Heroic mode is unlocked once normal mode is completed --> the Raid Finder version becomes available about one week after the raid’s initial opening. To review all of the latest Mists raid release details, everyone is encouraged to check out our latest blog, Blizzard Insider #45 – Mists of Pandaria – Raid Preview, which has a wealth of exciting new information.

On a final note, thank you to everyone who has been testing the new content, sharing your feedback, and helping us bring you the most epic game possible! It cannot be said enough, but we genuinely appreciate it. =)We thought our intent was made pretty clear in the Blizzard Insider article, as well as in my original post. But, if it’ll ease your concern, I’ll be more specific!

Veteran Players from Vanilla

Taepsilum

You're right, that actually tends to happen, it's easy to fall into that kind of discourse, although it doesn't necessarily make anyone's opinion more valid than anyone else’s, and quite often that kind of speech tends to be very nostalgic and distorts reality, making it hard to show an impartial opinion.

Still, for the players that experienced it, myself included, it is quite a big deal, and naturally so, but that doesn't mean that the game was better back then, on the contrary, the game has improved immensely since then. It is only normal for players that experienced it to sometimes claim that they miss certain features or actually miss the lack of them (flying mounts, 40man raids, no LFR, no content skipping, etc.).

I must admit that occasionally I say the same thing as well, but not with the intention of making my opinion seem more important, it frequently happens when I'm talking about the game’s evolution.

Consuming Content Too Fast

Draztal

Other than world firsts, was there ever any prestige to killing a boss? (outside the guild itself achieving that kill)

Heck, even people following the race don't care who killed a boss 2nd in the world, much less 20th...Sure, realm firsts might also have some prestige on the realm level, you're absolutely right. But as before, other than that... (and perhaps the first faction kill on the realm, as well).You're reading too much into that post :-)

Actually, challenge dungeons will help bring back that realm community feeling that might be missing for some of you, as groups for those dungeons have to be manually formed.You didn't understand my post at all. I said it very clear, outside the guild itself (which is what you mention in your post), not many players really care about who killed a boss other than world first and perhaps their realm first.Read my post again, that's not what I meant (and I even specified it on that post). Of course your guild cares about its position. People outside your guild, though, probably don't (unless they're looking for a guild to apply to) unless you're world first/realm first/country first/etc. Hopefully now what I was trying to get through makes sense? It's not about how your guildmates feel about your position.Okay. Nobody cares what guild killed Heroic Ragnaros heroic 4th, but they will care about AoE fest speed runs? What is the point of Blizzard adding Challenge mode dungeons when competition does not matter?

You're mixing competition with prestige...

They are adding a FoS for killing heroic bosses in MoP without the nerf. One can only hope that this FoS will disappear once the next tier comes out, otherwise it's a pretty pointless feat of strength.

Yes, those feats of strentgh you mention are the "Cutting Edge" achievements that you may have seen already in some fansites. The idea the developers have right now is that these won't be available once a new raid tier is introduced.

And currently the intention of the developers is to stick with these for future raid tiers.

I have always wondered why on earth blizzard releases % based nerfs that lower the difficulty of a fight through a buff or debuff. I mean by the time the nerfs are released ppl are hardly even geared in normal gear. Wouldn’t a better way to nerf content be to up the drop chance of items in the normal version? After all items are just another way of giving players a buff. Items are supposed to be the hidden in game nerfing that happens all the time jet it seems to hold no weight anymore. When the time comes where blizzard says ok we have to nerf a raid zone now, they could increase the drop chance of loot in normal to maybe double of what usually drops(or more) then you will gear people faster and they will then be able to enter heroics. This way you are not making normal mode irrelevant to players, your actually making it more relevant.You buffs/nerfs will be player/guild based and more importantly it will not feel like blizzard is stepping in and dumbing down the fights for you. You still killed the fight unnerfed just like the best guilds, it just took a bit longer.

The decision to implement the debuff is driven by the data the devs have access to. They can see participation and progression and how the numbers change every week in regards to completion rate.

And that data showed them that a large number of raiders was stuck at some point in their progression for multiple weeks and participation was declining.

The developers are aware that not everyone will agree with them (which is something I'll touch a bit later on this reply), but it's important to point out that they're making informed decisions based on comprehensive stats. And those stats tend to validate their reasoning for implementing the debuff/increasing it.

As I've mentioned on this thread in the past, the most advanced raiders that either rarely encounter something they can consider a true block in their progression or can work on them for weeks perceive the debuff as a nerf to content that is already doable (which it certainly is, for them), but it's not reasonable to ask the same from the majority of casual raiding guilds that would like to progress. Those players can't really wipe for weeks or months on a given boss without eventually giving up.

The developers feel it's better, overall, to make those goals in your progression feel more attainable over time before that discouragement to keep raiding comes into play.The developers don't plan to nerf challenge dungeons. There might be cases where the dungeon itself gets a nerf across the board and that could impact on the challenge mode version as well.

These are built under a different design philosophy than raids. Just as a reminder, challenge mode does actually have additional pulls and mechanics (not based on level/rank). And the developers expect that the first attempt at them will likely take some time and players should expect to finish bronze, they don't intend to lower the bar for silver/gold over time.

Simple answer is of course that they don't know. All that stuff about devs and data is nothing but smoke and mirrors. The planned debuffs are well proclaimed months in advance for one reason only. To keep the majority of the player base subscribed through yet another carrot on a stick.

You ask for answers, you get them. And since you don't like them, you just conclude that it's a diversion and that you know what's truly going on. I wonder, why are you replying to the thread, then? I mean, I have the feeling that then, no matter what we say, it's a lost argument unless we say what you want to read. It certainly feels that way.

1.Will there be an achievement or are they planning an achievement for clearing all bosses of the raid on heroic without nerfs? (Cutting the Edge Heroic:<Name of the Raid> for example).

2. Will the be any title rewards from these FoS achievements or are there any plans?

Both questions have the same answer, there're no plans right now.

LFR

Draztal

Yes i could skip LFR altogether, but the tier bonuses are something most players want and are needed to become competitive.

You get the same tier bonuses (and higher item level) from Normal and Heroic Dragon Soul.

and yet, you guys have made running older tiers obsolete, with forcing (by gear i mean) to chain run the latests tier raid.. feels kind of silly, yes?

You can run older tiers whenever you want. Not just for experiencing the content these days, also for the gear for transmogrification (if you like a particular tier set that you're missing), achievements and so on.

appease people who think that paying for a game entitles you to see all the content

And why are they wrong on that thought? On which basis should someone think that he can not see the content even if he's willing to pay the subscription for it?

Why not just mail everyone the BiS items and rarest mounts?

Is that what the players are demanding? I'm yet to see someone ask for that (that is not trolling, either).

Raiders complain they have to raid LFR to get the improvements.

They don't, really. The set bonuses are there in normal and heroic as well, and the item level is even higher.

Actually, in Mists of Pandaria, each new LFR tier will have an increased minimum ilevel requirement, so there'll be a natural progression path as the expansion goes on. This means that players will start running Heroic dungeons in order to gear up to hit the minimum ilevel for the first tier of LFR, then get gear from this first LFR tier to access the second, and so on.

However, it won't be mandatory to go through the LFR system if you're raiding normal or Heroic raids.

And since you'll probably ask, I'll answer pre-emptively, at this moment the developers are not ready to talk about possible 5-man Heroic dungeons with higher requirements that might come in future Mists of Pandaria patches.

Account Wide PvP Mounts

Mumper

All arena mount rewards and their associated FoS are unique per character. This might be bugged in the current build though.

What You'll Miss Heading Into MoP

Taepsilum

Experiencing cool new boss mechanics like on Atramedes and Alysrazor.Actually I enjoyed quite a few boss fights on heroic, 's End, Conclave of Wind, , and I really enjoyed most of the Boss encounters in Firelands, easily my favourite Cataclysm raid, I had so much fun there with so many characters!

I've always loved the start of every expansion, running 5 man dungeons with friends when we're all still undergeared is quite a blast. But I'm sure I'll have plenty of that kind of fun on Mists of Pandaria, this expansion is going to have more to do at the endgame than ever before, I'm particularly interested in trying out challenge modes.

Mana Bandages

Takralus

I'd have to agree with the earlier observation that mana is simply a resource, whereas health is essential, and the existing bandages can be a last minute life-saver.

A few questions that popped into my mind: Why should mana users get another way to regenerate their resource on top of all the regen abilities and potions they already have available? Isn't the ability to conserve mana and use it wisely part of the challenge of the game? Wouldn't it give mana users an unfair advantage over the classes that don't use mana? Are you suggesting all classes have a bandage-esque way to regenerate their resource? What about classes that regenerate their resource differently, wouldn't this new method be either practically useless or very overpowered?

Beta Class Balance Analysis

General

Ghostcrawler

Is it intended that secondary stats now have twice the itemization budget of primary stats in terms of gems

Yes. With the possible exception of Spirit, there is little decision in choosing red gems in the live game. Secondary stats are often more interesting in general because there are break points, hard caps, and personal preferences. Any Agi user who eschews Agi is doing it wrong.

it's ignored for the sake of game balancing.

It's not ignored. It's just not as big a priority. We know that if choosing e.g. a Resto shaman instead of a Resto druid increases group dps on fights where grasping for every point of damage is relevant, then it could be a stacking issue. You just have to keep these things in perspective. There haven't been historically many fights where stacking healers for their DPS benefit was relevant, and even if we're talking about 10k DPS you might get the same benefit by having your actual DPS characters step up their game by a teeny bit.

Now the original post about whether Enhance has a no-brainer talent tier is of more concern. It's less of a concern if Resto's spell damage is comparable to Enhancement's spell damage, given that the latter has a lot more going on.- Blacksmithing having a stronger profession perk is something we’re investigating.

Ghostcrawler

- Hurricane being stronger than Astral Storm is intended. - We’re investigating some bugs on Tranquility and Wild Growth under extreme haste (e.g. Soul of the Forest). - should scale with your crit and haste.Bloom's nerf now puts its mastery buffed healing per Shroom at 9.25k (LvL 90, full PvP gear, no gems/enchants/buffs).

For a 25man that number is somewhat acceptable if you manage to heal 10+ people with all 3 Shrooms for a total of only 277.5k healing done (without DR or AoE cap). After at least 3 GCDs of set up that just does not make it that attractive of a spell.

is not intended to be worth using rotationally. It should be worth planting the ‘Shooms when you have downtime, or lulls in healing requirements, and then them later on when you need burst healing (since is off the GCD). The numbers do appear off a bit for that design so we will adjust.

Is it intended that Bonus Armor is affected by Guardian Mastery? For example the Mantid Elixir which provides +2250 Armor is multiplied by the Guardian Mastery for a bonus of 2475 armor (before gear and buffs).

Yes, this is intended. Guardian Mastery should be a final multiplier on all armor.

Ghostcrawler

One concern about the latest changes to marksmanship hunters- the new mastery proc rate seems problematic to me. If I'm doing the math correctly, this puts a 7200 mastery rating hard cap on MM hunters, since that seems to be the amount of mastery rating at which you have a 100% proc rate on wild quiver.

A valid concern. Mastery being capped is not something we were intending with that change, and so are going to bring mastery back to 2% chance to trigger Mastery: Sniper Training per point, and double Mastery: Sniper Training’s damage back to 100% weapon damage (normalized).

Ghostcrawler

Judgment is once again a melee attack that has a 30-yard range. (Yes, re-read that to make sure you didn’t misread it...)

Edit: Judgement is also spelled Judgment now. The developers are playing nasty tricks on me to make sure I'm awake. :)Sanctity of Battle and Spell Haste

The intent is that Sanctity of Battle is based on melee haste instead of spell haste but we are waiting on a code change for that.- Eternal Flame being on the GCD for Protection is unintended. The hot not benefitting from mastery is intended, or that talent might feel mandatory for Prot. - Battle Healer costing mana is a bug.

Ghostcrawler

We're just not seeing healing priests falling behind on HPM or HPS in the current raid or challenge mode testing. I don't want to dismiss the concerns though, and we will keep an eye on it. Lack of "raid utility" is a very slippery beast. In my experience, healers always think their particular character lacks it. We believe however that all of the healers will continue to see plenty of PvE use, as they did in Cataclysm, and we want to get more of them competitive in PvP.Any changes expected for priests? I don't think Blizzard even knows what to do with the class.

We have a drinking game that requires excessive imbibement when we read that we don't know what to do with a class. Please go easy on us.

Ghostcrawler

Power Word: Solace is intended to be a choice. Those of you saying you *have* to have a fast cast time because you *have* to spam Power Word: Solace or you'll have no mana are arguing for the wrong thing, because I hope it's obvious that isn't the intent.

I know some of you are worried about your priest (and before that it was shaman and before that it was paladin and I probably missed druid in there somewhere) but we also have to rectify that with the performance and opinions of the players we see tackling the content on beta. If you want to be as helpful as possible, try to be very explicit with the situations and cases you feel your priest can't handle. The more detailed, the better. What spells are you casting? Which encounters? What feels different from Catclysm, remembering that you are no longer in end level gear?

We think it is possible to balance active vs passive regen. The key is in how healers use mana. Nobody needs infinite regen. You just need enough to heal a fight. If you consider a fight where you never have to heal, then Power Word: Solace will crush any other mana return because you have so many free GCDs in which to spam it. However, you also don't need that mana for healing in the contrived fight with no healing. As fight intensity increases, the need for mana increases BUT the time available for Power Word: Solace decreases. Power Word: Solace will work best on fights where there is very intensive healing followed by quiet periods in which you can nuke. But depending on the timing, Mindbender might work for those fights just as well.

We don't like Power Word: Solace with a cooldown because then you feel like you must use it on cooldown. With no cooldown, then is there is a continuum between fights where you have free time but need mana and fights where every cast time must be spent on a heal. The choice becomes the priest's.

I'm still seeing a lot of "I need to spam Power Word: Solace so make it more spamable" responses. You're not going to convince us with that argument. Let us know in what specific situations you are struggling with mana and what types of spells you are trying to cast. That is the actual issue in our minds.

I am also still seeing a lot of "we have provided you with the evidence." I wouldn't be asking if you had. There are maybe 3 links to parses and a couple more with any kinds of numbers at all. If you feel it is that easy to make your case, then make it. :)

As an aside, the only thing we didn't like about Charred Glyph as active mana generation was that it scaled too well with gear (in 4.3) and would have been a mandaory glyph (in 5.0).

It's a very common thing that when people feel they aren't being listened to they complain louder and more frequently.

I have been in this business for 15 years, so I can say with certainty that that strategy does not work. You run the risk of your entire point being dismissed if you come across as too uninformed to make an argument with some substance to back up the sweeping claims. If you are trying to convince anyone in a situation where you can't just order them to do something, whether that person is a boss, teacher, co-worker or government official, you'll do better with logic and reason than insults and hyperbole.

We appreciate the passion -- just channel it into something productive.

Ghostcrawler

It should work as the tooltip of Restorative Waves says; it not working is just a bug, and is fixed for the next build.

Ghostcrawler

As I said in the other thread, the intent of Charred Glyph is for free Lightning Bolts. If the trivial amount of mana gain interests you, that doesn't offend us. We don't believe or intend for it to be a mandatory glyph.

To clear up th history of the mechanic, it was originally intended to be a way for Resto shaman to feel like they could contribute DPS when they didn't need to heal. It wasn't intended as a mana regen mechanic. It absolutely became one when mana pools became high. We try not to make changes just because the design ends up being something not originally intended, as long as we think the gameplay is acceptable. It was reasonably acceptable in say 4.2 and got to the point where we didn't like it in 4.3, but still not worth chnging -- we try to reserve changes for expansions and not patches unless we think they are important. In 5.0 it is time to return the mechanic back to an optional way to contribute some damage for Resto. A glyph isn't the right way to deliver active mana return for a healer. It's not fair to shaman to have to take the glyph or to other healers who don't have that option.As an Enhancement Shaman, I'm much more concerned about -

1) Whether Windfury Weapon is supposed to activate off special attacks or not (far as I can tell we haven't gotten an answer about that yet).

Ghostcrawler

Warlocks, we want to mention that one thing inflating Demonology on beta currently is a bug with Decimation, which is making it trigger from Shadow Bolts on targets at any health % a majority of the time. That’s going to significantly influence target dummy comparisons. That’ll be fixed in the next build. (This isn’t to say that Demonology isn’t higher than Affliction/Destruction, but it's a discrepancy worth noting.)

As a result of the change to Drain Soul's mechanics, Agony now takes twice as long to ramp up, since the ticks are no longer faster under Drain Soul's channel. Is this additional nerf intended?

No, this should be fixed in the next build.

The tooltip for Nightfall says that it's now a 5% chance instead of the previous 10% chance. Since Nightfall was actually a stacking 2% chance, is there any change to it's internal mechanics? Do extra ticks caused by Drain Soul and cause Nightfall procs? Finally, is the Soul Shard generation component of Soul Harvest actually removed, or was it just moved off of the tooltip?

edit: Also, the tooltip for Drain Soul is a bit confusing. It says that it causes your DoTs to instantly do 50% normal periodic damage every 1 second when Drain Soul does damage. Does that instant damage count as periodic damage for related effects (Nightfall for Corruption, trinket effects related to DoT ticks, etc)? Does that instant damage happen every 1 second regardless of haste or does it happen when Drain Soul does damage?

My previous post answered most of this, but to answer the other parts… Nightfall is a 0.5% stacking proc chance now (averaging out to a 5.7% proc chance over time). That’s not intended to be a nerf to the frequency that Nightfall procs because you’re getting roughly twice as many chances per second to proc Nightfall as before.

The extra DoT ticks happen whenever Drain Soul ticks, not just every 1 sec. It still scales just as well with haste as before. These extra DoT ticks will show up differently than the regular DoT ticks in the combat log, but will have all the same benefits as the regular ones; same things it can proc, same chances, same damage (other than the 0.5x dmg multiplier from Drain Soul), everything.

This is actually a rather interesting talent, because the feedback has been negative for many forum posters, yet many of the guilds in our heroic raid testing have been using Mannoroth's Fury for most encounters because it is so strong. We’re totally open to the idea that it’s an unattractive talent and should be changed, but so far we’re only seeing the perception of that, not it actually being that.

Before a dozen Warlocks jump down my throat for telling you that Mannoroth's Fury is awesome, I’d encourage you to check out how it’s being used in many of the raid encounters and PvP.

Haste scaling was nerfed significantly through this.- Under the old model, the scaling of the extra dots was linear with the scaling of haste on additional dot ticks during the duration. In other words, as I go from six to seven ticks of my Corruption, for a full Drain Soul channel I go from 12, to 14 ticks total.- Under the new model, as I go from 9 to 10 ticks on my Corruption, Drain Soul isn't giving me any extra ticks on the Drain Soul channel, and I'm therefore not getting any extra ticks on Corruption. I do realize Drain Soul will eventually gain another tick, but not nearly as fast as my dots will...in other words the linear scaling will no longer apply.

With the new form of Drain Soul, it does indeed smooth out haste’s breakpoints. But that doesn’t mean that haste as a whole is worse, just that you don’t care as much about specific breakpoints of haste. Drain Soul ticks will accelerate with haste just as fast as DoT ticks will.

The spec is now bound to Drain Soul's ticks rather than Drain Soul's channel.- Under the new model, the haste effect of the Dot is tied to a discreet amount of Drain Soul channeling, i.e. 1 second. .9 secs of channeling gives me nothing. 1.9 secs of channeling isn't any better than 1 second of channeling. This brings latency and the need to move into the spec in a way that's hugely detrimental to a huge chunk of our damage. The old Drain Soul didn't have this issue, every instant spent channeling was beneficial to our DPS. This is hard to model in a simulation and easy to ignore, but this will matter and makes the spec significantly harder to manage for the average player. It's true that not waiting for a tick of Drain Soul before "hurt" your dps, but the effect was miniscule compared to the effect under the new design.

This is the problem we were trying to solve with the change to Drain Soul: What you describe here is how you thought it worked, but it didn’t actually work that way. The precise timing of which Drain Soul was applied and when it faded was actually very important, in very unintuitive ways. You would expect that if you had 71.3% Drain Soul uptime (just making up a number), you would get 71.3% more DoT ticks (and I believe were simulating it something like that). You wouldn’t. You’d actually get somewhere between 50% and 90% more DoT ticks, depending upon where the Drain Soul applications/fades lined up with natural DoT ticks.

We liked the design of Drain Soul before, but it was something our combat engine was just going to struggle with. We didn't want it to feel buggy. We hope the new form of Drain Soul is more reliable. When it ticks, you get an extra tick.

The community simulation results of this new build that I’ve seen so far are showing Affliction and Destruction very close (and we hope to make them even closer before release), with Demonology significantly ahead. We’re also seeing that internally, though not quite as extreme. We’re investigating that, to see what discrepancy there is there, and how much of an adjustment is in order.

Also, for anyone, note that if you feel your damage is lacking, please let us know in what situations and compared to whom. It's not sufficient to say "my damage felt fine before and I don't like being nerfed." Nobody likes being nerfed, and stating that doesn't give us much to go on.

Affliction's best stat is now mastery, by far, with haste being down where crit is, but our Dark Soul grants haste. Point for point we gain the least from our Dark Soul. Now the numbers are very okay at the moment, so it would be iffy to causeDark Soul to grant the "highest" stat rather than the stat favored by the spec that you decide on, it just really bothers me that our main cd is worth (stat weights included) 33% less than the other two.

We’d like to hear more about why SimulationCraft (or any other community theorycraft) is seeing haste drop in value due to this patch. With the same amount of haste, you should see the same number of ticks of each DoT, before and after this last patch, after accounting for the reduced period on UA and Corruption. It’s possible that we’re missing something.

My personal testing on target dummies and every sim i've seen is now hoping Affliction at the bottom of the warlock heap

Any sources for this so we have something to actually go on? As we said above, Affliction damage was too high. Not every damage adjustment needs to be greeted with sky is falling rhetoric or the discussion quickly loses its benefit.

Comments

Comment by deathbyte

on 2012-08-01T15:08:07-05:00

Is there a reason that I can not see this on the forums if no one has posted a comment yet? I know it should be there from facebook and thats how I then get there, but first I am normally on the forums. Is there anyway I can fix this? It happens with every Wowhead news post

(or should i put this in the feedback forums?)

Comment by Adamsm

on 2012-08-01T15:15:19-05:00

Lol, that's pretty cool, a Keyblade staff ^_^ Gonna have to make sure I get a Scribe up to make that for all my casters.

Comment by Plutofour

Comment by Tenjen

on 2012-08-01T16:08:14-05:00

aha love that drinking game ghostcrawler joked about (i think)

Comment by darkpred

on 2012-08-01T16:19:39-05:00

Just a heads up the Inscribed Tiger Staff image is linked the to the wrong model viewer, I double checked the item page and the model viewer there is showing the right model so looks like an incorrect link.

Comment by Tenjen

on 2012-08-01T16:31:48-05:00

oh and yah those staves are AWESOME.

Comment by hakwea

on 2012-08-01T16:41:46-05:00

Never mind guess I should have just clicked the item link. Its a quest that allows you to turn the Epic Staffs into a NPC for 10 scrolls.

Comment by Adamsm

Comment by Interest

on 2012-08-01T17:28:55-05:00

The Hunter mastery cap thing made me chuckle =P.

Comment by Jorge36

on 2012-08-01T17:51:39-05:00

I'm a little confused on the inscription staffs. The rare lvl 85 version is BOE and the epic lvl 90 version is BOA. And the recipe to craft the epic version requires the rare version. So I craft a staff for one of my other toons, they use it and it is bound to them. They hit 90 and I have a soulbound staff I can't send back to my scribe to upgrade...

Comment by perculia

on 2012-08-01T18:12:44-05:00

It's probably meant to be a nice first-tier profession perk, just like engineering goggles. Your scribe can get an epic weapon boost when first hitting 90, but it's not better than raid weapons.

Comment by Voltt

on 2012-08-01T18:32:43-05:00

I like how they're making up gradable weapons for at least one prof.

I miss the old blacksmith weapons

Comment by Brandonly17

on 2012-08-01T20:22:22-05:00

What is inscription the new weaponsmith...? lol

Throw Blacksmiths a damn bone, the Blacksmith models are god awful compared to these models for Inscription.

Comment by Azrile

on 2012-08-01T20:27:11-05:00

I'm a little confused on the inscription staffs. The rare lvl 85 version is BOE and the epic lvl 90 version is BOA. And the recipe to craft the epic version requires the rare version. So I craft a staff for one of my other toons, they use it and it is bound to them. They hit 90 and I have a soulbound staff I can't send back to my scribe to upgrade...

Eh, the low level one isn´t all that great compared to what you can get from questing and a few dungeons. But yeah, you are right.. if you mail the blue one to an alt and he equips it, you will have to create another blue one in order to make the BOA epic.

My guess is the blue ones will be everywhere on the AH, so no big deal.

Comment by Alkony

on 2012-08-01T20:45:37-05:00

Awesome! Glad the inscription items will be BOA as my scribe is a lesser used alt.

Comment by Ruhig

on 2012-08-01T21:04:52-05:00

I am so pumped for my new panda now. Always planned on making him a monk with Inscription, given the symmetry of China's history with writing and art. And now I find I can make +Agi staves? And epic ones, at that? :D

Comment by SirusStarseeker

on 2012-08-02T12:46:10-05:00

The Keyblade? Do want, but don't you think we could have used its power earlier?